Mind and Iron
by phattrash
Summary: 1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. 2. A robot must obey orders given to it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. 3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
1. Chapter 1

When Dean got home, there was a huge package waiting for him by the door, where his landlady had presumably propped it up. He picked up the card hovering over the box, noting the monochromatic logo of the Robotics Management Council emblazoned across it. 'From your friends over in Consumer Protection. Congrats on becoming a product manager! Enclosed is the latest prototype from R.U.R.' Swiping the card away, he smirked a little to himself at the thought that, to celebrate his promotion, his employers had essentially gifted him with more grunt work.

Not that he minded too much, because luckily for him, he quite enjoyed product testing, but the rumor mill was abuzz with speculations about this new model, and he got the feeling it would have a multitude of state-of-the-art features to run tests on. Swinging open the door to his apartment after fiddling clumsily with his bent key card, he shouldered his way into the room with the unwieldy box in tow and kicked the door shut behind him. Blowing out an impatient breath, he laid the box down flat in the middle of the floor and tore into its semi-synthetic edges with his pocket knife, flipping the top up and peering inside.

The android, nestled in purple packing peanuts, had its arms folded over its chest and its eyes shut. It was the typical resting position, but the remarkable lifelikeness of its design made it look disconcertingly like a corpse. Dean shook off a sudden stab of trepidation and gently lifted the robot out of the box, sitting its lax body up and examining it from all angles. It was a male type, with brown hair that curled into its eyes, boyish features, and long limbs. He felt at the back of its neck for the on switch, becoming confused when he didn't find it in its usual spot below the serial number.

He had to spend several minutes skimming the lengthy user manual before he discovered that R.U.R had re-positioned it at the earlobe. "Weird place for it," he muttered to himself, sliding out of place what he'd thought to be a stud earring and pressing the button underneath. With a soft humming noise, the robot powered up, sliding its eyes open and getting to its feet. "Hi," Dean said, standing to face it and smiling reflexively. "I'm Dean. I'll be your master for the next month or so. What's your name?" The android blinked several times, and Dean was taken once again with how eerily human it looked.

"I am the Servitor Appliance Model," it answered. Its voice chip appeared to be of high quality, which was great news for Dean, because the last prototype he'd been saddled with had been equipped with a voice that grated like nails on a chalkboard. "Sam, then," Dean said decisively, flipping quickly through its list of preliminary functions as he spoke.

"If that is what you wish to call me, I will answer to it." The corner of Dean's mouth quirked up at that.

"A little stuffy, aren't you." He knew that was because the robot was brand-new and hadn't yet had enough interactions for its language development curve to kick in, but he couldn't resist a bit of ribbing. Sam didn't answer, choosing instead to tilt its head and stare at him expectantly. "Okay, uh…I guess you can start by sweeping up around here. God knows it's been ages since I dusted anything."

"Affirmative." Dean squinted at Sam bemusedly. "Was that—"

"A joke, yes. I thought I would try it out." Dean laughed, surprised and the tiniest bit awed. "A robot that tells jokes. AI's come so far since the Apple era. I think you gotta work on your delivery, though. The dead-eyed monotone is kinda off-putting."

Sam nodded as if chewing on a bit of sage advice, before turning around to survey the room. "Might you direct me to the cleaning supplies?"

"Right, um. It's been ages since I've housed an Appliance Model, and I don't really own any, uh…" He trailed off at Sam's blank stare and tried a more straightforward approach. "Tell me about your applications."

"Of course. I am equipped with a hose, a heating mechanism, a flashlight, and a series of sterilized industrial blades. I can assist you with all your accounting and budgetary needs at a professional level, and my academic databases are expansive and up-to-date should you wish to utilize my search engines. I am required to inform you that in the unlikely event that I pose any kind of a threat to you, you may disable me from a safe distance with the clicker enclosed in my packaging. In case of emergency, you may also call the RMC Safety Hotline for help. Do you require further elaboration?"

"Nope, that's good, thanks. Now let me just see if I can find that damned…" Dean swept his eyes around his cramped room in search of the broom he'd apparently misplaced several years back; he hadn't done his own cleaning since he took his previous job, which had mainly consisted of running tests on tricked-out Roombas and tweaking their serial interfaces. One would think that Dean would be able to afford a less crappy apartment as an employee of the RMC, but even with his new promotion his salary wasn't half as impressive as it would have been several decades ago.

"Target located," Sam announced out of nowhere, walking over to Dean's futon and pulling out the broom from underneath it.

"You gotta stop talking like that, dude. You sound like a 2000's model." Getting to work on a particularly dirty corner of the room, Sam answered, "I know. I can joke, if you'll recall. It is one of my many skills." It kept its poker face as it said this, but Dean felt himself offering Sam a grin anyway. The engineers were getting closer every year, he thought. He'd just unpackaged it half an hour ago, but Sam already seemed to be the most personable android he'd met in all his years spent surrounded by them.


	2. Chapter 2

Dean woke up with his face shoved into a couch cushion and his arm bent at an uncomfortable angle underneath him, mouth tasting like old socks and eyes full of grit. He sat up and yawned, jaw creaking loudly, before startling the second his sight adjusted. "Jesus!" He banged his hand on the arm of the couch as he drew back, because Sam was standing stonily over him, face expressionless in a way only an android's could be. Dean shook his head, heart hammering in his chest. "You been watching me sleep?" Sam blinked. "You didn't instruct me to do otherwise, so I presumed to remain where you'd left me."

"Okay, well. Could you not…loom over me like that? Personal space."

"I apologize," Sam droned, taking several steps back, hands still clasped in front of him demurely. "What would you have me do, now? I'm really, really bored." Dean cocked an eyebrow at the abrupt shift in tone, wondering if Sam had finally transitioned out of its factory settings.

"Uh…what time is it?"

"Five AM, Master," Sam rattled off immediately. "Ugh, shouldn't have gone to bed so late last night." He stifled another yawn before looking up at Sam on a whim. "Wanna join me for breakfast?"

Sam held up a hand, like it was volunteering an answer in a classroom. "I possess the utensils with which to prepare a range of meals, including but not limited to—"

"Woah, hey. _I'll_ be making breakfast this morning. If you really want to, you can wash the dishes afterward." The resoluteness in Dean's voice surprised him, considering the closest thing in his pantry to breakfast food was beef jerky and he couldn't cook to save his life. He hoped that whatever misplaced sense of hospitality this was that had him turning down an actual home-cooked meal wouldn't be a repeat offender.

"I wonder, why would you invite me to commune with you when you know full well that I am unable to consume food?"

"You know what I'm wondering? Why you insist on speaking like an old ANGEL model even though your language acquisition programs are grade-A."

"I dunno," Sam said, making a sort of shrugging movement. The effect was scarily natural. "It's the way I'm engineered."

"But you—just now, you switched to standard vernacular. Is it a bug?" If robots could express emotions, Sam would be looking confused right about now. "I'm…not sure. I wasn't…" It broke out of its too-humanoid moment of deliberation after a minute, artificial indifference wiping the smidge of unsettling expression from its face. "I'll stick to the vernacular from now on, since you seem to prefer it."

"Yeah," Dean said slowly, making a mental note to report this apparent interface defect to the manufacturers before the testing period ended. "Anyway," he continued, getting up and stretching his limbs with a groan, "Gotta get to work soon. You're not my full-time job, you know?"

"Okay. Can I do anything for you? Press your clothes? Style your hair?" "You can do the dishes after I eat," Dean repeated, "and stay here until I'm back tonight." He pulled his lone suit out of the closet and set it on the bed. "You don't need to be so eager to please. There'll be plenty for you to do around here without your having to micro-manage me."

Sam followed him into the bathroom, staring at him in the mirror as he squeezed toothpaste onto his brush. "What am I supposed to do all day without you? Can you provide me with a list of errands to complete?"

Sam sounded like a broken record, and this was the thing about R.U.R's Appliance androids that got to be a niggling annoyance during the few instances that he'd had to work on them. They always expected to be loaded down with menial tasks. Dean lived a rather simple life, didn't have much in the way of daily responsibilities that weren't centered around his job at the office, so the meager checklist of housework he presented them with was rarely enough to utilize the breadth of their programming. Dean finished brushing his teeth and spit into the sink before answering its question. "I do have a list for you, but if you finish early, why don't you just power down until I get home? No point in wasting energy."

Sam blinked, watching Dean apply goop to his hair. "Are you sure? I could perform in a single day what you can't get done in three. If you want, you can book me solid for the rest of this week so I have all my duties unquestionably laid out for me."

"That's great and all, but I'd prefer we take it one day at a time. Sorry, but I don't have nearly as much work for you as you're designed to take. I'll have to figure out other ways to test your capabilities."

"Oh."

Dean eyed Sam's hand, which had been creeping steadily up to his half-gelled hair. He grabbed its wrist with the hand that wasn't slick with the stuff and said, "I told you. I like doing this stuff by myself." "But I could give your hair a _professional_ touch," Sam insisted. Its hand was warmer than Dean's. "You saying you don't like my hair?"

Sam backpedaled so quickly that Dean wanted to laugh. "Your hair is perfect as it is, of course. You're a very attractive man, and your haircut suits you well."

"But…?"

"But you're using too much gel. Fact."

Dean released Sam's wrist and grinned, screwing the cap onto the bottle and combing his fingers through his hair in an outward motion to spread the stuff evenly. "Noted, Your Eminence."

"Shouldn't you have showered and gotten dressed before gelling your hair?"

"Skipping the shower, man. And the hair always takes precedence over the outfit."

"How unusual," Sam remarked, trailing after Dean as he left the bathroom and started shucking the clothes he'd slept in. He felt a little weird for a split-second's worth of hesitation, because Sam looked so realistic that it was like he was undressing in front of a stranger, but he reminded himself that it didn't make sense to be bashful in front of a machine. Still, Sam's wandering eyes didn't put him any more at ease.

"Quit staring," Dean said, changing into a fresh pair of boxers and pulling his slacks on over them. Sam immediately looked away, and Dean remembered that Sam was mechanically obligated to follow most of his direct commands.

It made him oddly uncomfortable, more so than the shameless staring had. He wondered if he needed to get his head checked, or something, because his thoughts weren't making much sense to him lately. "Anyway, um. I'll see you tonight," Dean said, grabbing his backpack and his rail pass and marching to the door without a second glance. It was only once he was descending in the elevator that he realized he'd completely forgotten to eat breakfast.

x

Dean was dozing off in his cubicle when his energetic coworker, Charlie, startled him awake. He swiped at the drool on his cheek and started to face his HoloMonitor, before she clapped him on the back jovially. "No use in pretending like you weren't halfway to dreamland, Dean. C'mon, I know you better than that." He scowled and swiped a hand through his hair, telling himself that he really needed to set his sleep schedule straight one of these days.

"I see you're still neglecting the dress code," he retorted, eyeing her metallic leggings and her giant sweater judgmentally. She threw her head back and laughed deeply, strands of her red hair coming loose from her messy bun. "What're they gonna do, fire me? I may be an expendable peon at first glance, but after that hacking stint I pulled off at KUKA they know better than to bust my balls over trivialities."

"You could easily climb the ranks here if you wanted," Dean told her for the umpteenth time. "It amazes me that you _enjoy_ festering in a glorified box all day and memorizing fucking schematics diagrams."

"Keep talking like that, people might think you don't like your job. Heard about the promotion, by the way. I gotta say, it doesn't look like much of an upgrade." Dean shrugged. "Hey, at least I got a new temp out of it. My place's been looking pretty shoddy these past couple of months, and I've never gotten to use a model _this_ complex before. It's a two birds, one stone situation." Charlie twisted a loop of hair around her finger contemplatively. "Oh yeah? The big cheeses are keeping quiet about it, but I hear that what they gave you is actually the beta version; thing's slated for mass production as soon as testing winds down. If the rumors are true, the demand for it's gonna be through the roof."

Dean scratched at his cheek idly, thinking about Sam's language acquisition hiccup and the way its outward humanness creeped Dean out half the time. He wondered if maybe he should consider adding both of those to his report as potential design flaws. A sudden gleam appeared in Charlie's eyes, and she leaned forward conspiratorially to ask, "Is it, you know, _endowed_?"

"Huh?"

She threw a quick glance over her shoulder and clarified, "_You know_, is it as realistic _where it counts_ as it is everywhere else?"

"Gross!" Dean hissed, praying that the walls didn't have ears; he didn't need any unsavory rumors about his sex life spread around just as he'd become almost worthy of office gossip. "How skeevy do you think I am, Charlie? I've never even _seen_ a Sex Bot before…" He trailed off before conceding in the smallest voice he could manage, "…outside of the occasional porno."

"Hey, there's no shame in it," she said, and he cut in, "I think it's _pretty_ shameful to fuck a man-made, nonconscious lump of simu-flesh and wiring every night. Especially when it's such a poor imitation of the real deal."

"How would you know, tightwad? You couldn't afford one of the newest models even if you wanted to. And since the guys upstairs only throw Appliances and old-fashioned relics your way, I guess your chances of having hot robot sex are as low as mine." Dean shushed her insistently and swung his head to the left and right of him with more force than was necessary. "What got you started on this spiel, anyway? Are those HR dumbasses browsing restricted sites in the breakroom again? Remind me to ask them how they keep beating the filter."

"Seriously," Charlie said, ignoring his questions, "What does it look like? Does it have customizable specs? Are they gonna be releasing the entire line in the prototypical design?"

"It's not bad-looking, I guess," Dean sighed, rolling his eyes at her enthusiasm, "but considering nobody buys Appliances for anything besides their rigid productibility, I really don't think that matters."

"Your libido is in a sad, sad state, my friend," Charlie proclaimed gravely, earning herself another burst of frantic shushing.

"If your girlfriend could hear you now," Dean muttered under his breath, refusing to acknowledge the obnoxious voice at the back of his head that was asking him when it was that he'd last gotten laid.

"Oh, Pamela's all _about_ experimentation. Don't think she'd blame me for my healthy curiosity." Dean was about to say something to express his skepticism over that comment when Castiel's voice interrupted them through the wall of his cubicle. "Complaints _will_ be filed against certain loafers if they continue to disregard the tenets of workplace conduct."

Dean winced and turned back to his monitor, whispering, "Guy sounds more like a robot than Sam does."

"Yeah, sorry you didn't score a new cubicle. But hey, now you've got _Sam_ to keep you company when I'm too busy to comfort your lonely ass."

"Get outta here, deadweight."

Charlie leered at him before she left, plunging him back into the cold, streamlined silence of the office.

Five more hours to go, he told himself, settling in for a long stretch of nothing but error-checking and eye strain. So far, the only thing even remotely different about his upgrade to product manager was the top-notch android waiting for him in his apartment.


End file.
